The year 2018 marks the centenary of the end of the cataclysmic war that
engulfed Europe, swept away monarchies, and upended the old order. In the years
after 1918, many artists developed radical aesthetic programs that spoke to the
utopian desire for a new society, for a new humanity.
Piet Mondrian’s absolute
non-objectivity,
Fernand Léger’s machine-age cubism, and Vassily
Kandinsky’s
lyrical abstraction were three responses, exemplified in three powerful
paintings on loan from the distinguished collection of Carolina alumnus Julian
H. Robertson, Jr.